


The Puppeteer

by DrGaybelGideon



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: A little drabble because I love the idea, Dark!Frederick AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2016-08-28
Packaged: 2018-08-11 11:07:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7889038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrGaybelGideon/pseuds/DrGaybelGideon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Perhaps, just perhaps, the great and useless Frederick Chilton was less of both than first glances would allow. Ripper!Chilton AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Frederick’s hands are excellent things. Body parts he’s fond enough of to grace them with a rare genuine smile, a tiny appreciative gesture as he removes the gold class ring from the middle one. Dexterous, long fingered, talented- by his own admission and the enthusiastic reviews of past partners- at many things.  
Like sex. Painting.  
Murder.  
He tends to get fewer positive reviews for his last hobby, but making Tattle Crime’s front page twelve times tends to soften that blow.  
  
It’s not murder. Not really.   
It’s a removal of rubbish, garbage disposal, shedding unwanted pounds: if the slight pull at the bottom of his back serves as an accurate scale, he’s lost around 93 in under a minute and saved the hospital a fortune.  
She was never particularly pleasant on the eye, he justifies, meeting blank bloodied sockets as her weight oozes slowly into place on a collection of sharp objects. And a truly abysmal nurse, which whilst bad for her is a good thing for him: she hadn’t taken any blood tests. Good. A missing tube of arthritis ointment and a normally sedate patient’s inexplicable desire to eat it would have been rather difficult to explain to even Jack Crawford.  
  
He’s meeting Will Graham for the first time as soon as he reports Abel’s little misdeeds.  
Perhaps now would be a rather good time to wash the blood off his hands.  
  
He doesn’t end up washing them, once the kidney’s been paced in a surgical bowl. He stands behind Abel Gideon- they’re similar diminutive heights, being slightly taller than someone’s an amusing bonus to an already good day- and wipes gloved hands on clothed thighs, hips, anywhere he imagines a semi-arthritic surgeon would relieve his hands of blood.  
“Impressive.” There’s a small, flattering amount of admiration in Abel’s tone as his jumpsuit’s used as an impromptu hand towel: well, Frederick could be embellishing that part of the story, the sheer amount of barbiturates in Abel’s system has made his speech a little slurred, but the words did stumble their way from the other man’s lips.  
The man always was his most charming patient, a crime and achievement that’s earned him this fate.  
“So I’m the Chesapeake Ripper?” A roll of vowels. Abel’s tasting the word, testing it, seeing if it fits his palette. It doesn’t, of course it doesn’t, murder’s never actually been Gideon’s taste- more the flavour of mad cow disease than the wine that coats Frederick’s own tongue- but the therapy sessions have helped with that, amnytal and charm molding the man into a viable suspect for murders he didn’t commit.  
“Yes, Abel.” A small, needless reassurance. He knows. The man’s well rehearsed for the part he has to play, willing to sacrifice his identity for a last grab at any notoriety that doesn’t involve him being painted as crazed.  
  
…Perhaps a little too willing. Frederick’s not a paranoid man, but there’s something-  
No. If he had any doubts about Abel Gideon’s ability to go through with this, he’d leave the cuffs on the man and clean up the body himself.  
He doesn’t, and so leans forward. Makes sure to press his body into Abel a little, further their bond and reassure the man with contact, a gesture from the slightly odd look in the man’s eyes that probably isn’t needed as he clicks the cuffs off his wrists and steps backwards, watching intently as one hand rubs a thick tendon.  
  
Abel’s hands, although less beautiful than his own, seem capable. Strong. As steady, despite the gore of the gouged sockets he’s currently digging fingerprints into, as the slightly unsettling smile on his face; Frederick’s own smile, beamed back at him by a man prepared to face sentences for the Wound Man crimes he’s already outgrown.  
Frederick’s oddly proud of the pretender to his throne in that moment, broad thumbs slicked red with the blood of the thirteenth murder he didn’t commit.  
  
Frederick’s reapplied the ring to his middle finger and stuffed the plastic suit in the small space meant for a spare tire in the boot of his car by the time a frantic trainee bursts into his office and distracts him from his impending dinner plans with Gideon’s murder. She’s almost on them for that, for a shrill voice and a face less pretty when pale with shock and the fact she’s anxiously rubbing dirty shoes into his plush cream carpet, little inconveniences he’s only not sauteeing her for because two employees dead in two days would be careless.  
Careless. Care less. Frederick’s oddly entertained by how well the word applies to him in this scenario when broken down.  
“Lead the way.” Frederick orders, practicing small facial gestures in the glass panes of the cells he passes in an attempt to twist his face into anything other than the inappropriately smug satisfaction it’s wearing at the moment.  
“Doctor Gideon, what have you done?” His voice holds, face hopefully betraying as little of the feeling of accomplishment that’s filling him at the moment.  
His alibi, the spanner in the works of the FBI’s pursuit is being restrained, put on a trolley without question by guards believing their little work of fiction completely.  
It’s working.  
He’s off the hook, manhandling the hook, his personal Frankenstein’s monster now a compelling bait.  
Abel winks.


	2. 2

Freddie Lounds has always trusted her instincts, however illogical they may seem to other people. She’s learned the hard way over the years that she has a knack for being right.  
This, a thought as shocking as the sudden crack of metal on bone as the man in front of her crashes to the floor, seems like another unwanted addition to her list.  
  
Frederick Chilton has always seemed… sinister to her, somehow, for reasons far less obvious than the man’s eyes’ permenant fixation on her breasts. Something in his gaze or posture or voice just doesn’t seem to fit, but it’s a _something_ she can’t quite put her finger on: the man’s seemed to set off her radar and yet fly under it each of the four times they’ve met in the past. A feat that even Will Graham couldn’t manage.  
  
Abel Gideon is confused. Hiding it well as he lays out a row of gleaming scalpels, but confused. He hasn’t harmed her in the seeming eternity of time she’s been here, doesn’t appear to have even considered it. Which makes her, in a feeling that’s purely gut, no logic, feel slightly more concerned about the man on the table, because Will Graham is a killer, Abel Gideon is confused.  
Frederick Chilton feels like something else entirely.   
  
Freddie realises it’s his eyes that are wrong a little too late for Abel. Frederick’s struggling against his bonds, breathlessly pleading and making small noises of protest the more buttons are unbuttoned to the soundtrack of a dry commentary. His pupils, on the other hand, are pinpricks, no trace of fear and dilation in black holes locked onto Abel’s face as it retreats down his body. Freddie’s watching a pair of ankle restraints being tightened when something cracks into the back of the man’s skull, causing him to drop to the floor like a string-cut marionette as Frederick’s arm returns to the place it shot out from and puts down whatever the weapon was before undoing the other wrist cuff. And then the man’s sitting up, ignoring her as his hands undo Abel’s hard work and free his feet before sitting, rolling his wrists a few times to restore blood flow. And then, somehow more frighteningly than watching the other man being unexpectedly felled, Frederick Chilton smiles at her, the same smarmy twist of lips he’s allowed her the few times his eyes have ever met her face.  
  
Somehow, that small gesture makes it all make sense.  
He’s not staring at her cleavage now, isn’t staring at her at all, is ducking to press steady fingers to the small dipped hollow of Abel’s throat.  
“He’s not dead.” Frederick reassures, and it’s quite clear to her now that the man examining Gideon’s set of tools with the occasional amused laugh is no more a haphazard, clumsy psychiatrist than she herself is. “Anesthetic. The man’s a responsible surgeon, I will allow him that. Perhaps it was loyalty, perhaps he wanted me awake to see it.” Eyes return to her again, far colder than the playful flicker of his mouth would suggest, she should have noticed this before but he’s- unsuspecting, smug, stupid, too obvious to seem capable of that level of crime. “Loyalty to the original Ripper, that is, I cannot take credit for that title.”  
“What have you done?” It’s a small, stupid statement, the type made by unoriginal protagonists of superhero films. Horror is in fact a more appropriate genre for this moment, she corrects herself.  
“Knocked out a vengeful patient in self defense.” The man in front of her, frowning now slightly as he rolls Abel over with his foot, has killed an amount of people even the FBI has trouble keeping count of, from right within their midst.  
  
It’s so awful, so horrifying, such a nightmare she’s almost impressed.  
  
“So the original Ripper-” He’s not going to confess, of course he’s not, he’s too smart for that, but something in her tone draws his attention again, perhaps an awful sort of awe he can’t help but be flattered by.  
“A psychiatrist or Doctor of medicine. Located in or around Baltimore, according to the same profile I gave the FBI.” His small twisted lips haven’t changed from before, but the permanant grin is getting somehow more unsettling, possibly because the man’s now holding a sharp object in his hand, a needle, which he plunges into the stomach his open shirt’s left visible. Injects himself with local anesthetic. In a move as surprising to her as his original attack on the other man, Frederick breaks eye contact to lie himself back down on the bed, position himself the same way and strap himself back in. “Hannibal Lecter happens to be both of those. He should be careful. A man with his quaifications would provide quite the fitting suspect.” A statement, an innocently blinked encouragement made to sound like spontaneous thought. “If you wouldn’t mind phoning the FBI and an ambulance, I will be in quite a bit of trouble if our dear Doctor Gideon decides to go anywhere other thank my kidney.” Brainwashing, a wave of nausea hits now, her realisation doing nothing to knock the hideous grin from Frederick’s face as he prepares to become his own alibi and she follows his instructions on autopilot.  
And then Abel groans into cold tiles.  
She can’t accuse him, he’ll be in a mess by the time whatever’s left of him is dragged out of here and she’ll ruin whatever’s left of her reputation throwing unprovable smears at a hospital patient.  
He knows this. Mouths something she decides is “big fan” before his head rolls back onto the pillow as Abel straightens up, blinking groggily.  
“Please, Abel, you’re not the Chesapeake Ripper.” The fog clears. Frederick Chilton is about to let himself be torn to pieces, a routine he’s had planned for months, to cement his own alibi.  
Abel starts a clinical running commentary again.  
Frederick pushes his lips together in a calmly blown kiss as the scalpel bites into his flesh.


End file.
